A brand new study examining the nation's fastest-growing population of students — Hispanics — is out and the findings are pretty bleak

Thirty-three percent of Hispanic children in 2008 lived in families where no parent had full-time employment compared with 21% of white children. And in 2007, 27% of Hispanic children lived in poverty compared with 10% of white children. Those factors and others translate to Hispanic children being less likely than their white or black peers to recognize letters of the alphabet, knowing how to write their name, or being able to count to 20 or higher. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Hispanic proficiency rates in reading from 2003 to 2009 were at least 26 percentage points below the rates for white students in 4th grade and 24 percentage points below white students' in 8th grade. For math in those same years, the proportion of Hispanic students performing at or above proficient was at least 29 percentage points lower than for white students in 4th grade and 26 points lower in 8th grade. Hispanic students in 2008 were much more likely to drop out than their white and black peers: 2.5 times more likely to drop out than white students and almost twice as likely as black students. And in 2010, fewer than two out of 10 Hispanic students took an Advanced Placement exam compared with six out of 10 white students.